‘Live in the moment’: Former Royal Marines Commando Jason ‘Foxy’ Fox, 46, reveals the one lesson he has learned from life
- Ex-Royal Marines Commando Jason Fox stepped away from taking his life in 2013
- The 46-year-old was medically discharged from military after 20 years for PTSD
- He said he lost the ability to live in the moment and was over-thinking things
Former Royal Marines Commando Jason ‘Foxy’ Fox, 46, is best known as a presenter on Channel 4’s reality series SAS: Who Dares Wins. In 2018 he wrote a best-selling memoir, Battle Scars. Jason is divorced and lives with his partner in London.
I stepped away from committing suicide in 2013. The year before I had been medically discharged from the military after 20 years for PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) and that’s when I lost my way.
In the next year I found myself in the emotional state of wanting to finish it. But I found a brilliant therapist, Alex, and we’d go for walks together. One day there was a kid in the woods, about 18 months old, with her mum.
Alex said: ‘Pay attention to what the child is doing.’ After about half an hour it was clear that this kid was just living in the moment. She did her own thing, fell over, cried, got up again, and did it again. She wasn’t thinking about the past, wasn’t worried about the future and didn’t over-think things.
Former Royal Marines Commando Jason ‘Foxy’ Fox, 46, is best known as a presenter on Channel 4’s reality series SAS: Who Dares Wins (pictured on the show)
Towards the end of my military career I’d got married, had a kid and was still going off fighting. I was in a ditch in a horrific gunfight — one of my squadron had just been killed — and that’s when my mental health problems began
It was such an important lesson.
Towards the end of my military career I’d got married, had a kid and was still going off fighting. I was in a ditch in a horrific gunfight — one of my squadron had just been killed — and that’s when my mental health problems began. I got divorced and had no money and was sleeping on friends’ sofas. I couldn’t get a job in security because my mental health problems were on my record. I lost the ability to live in the moment and was over-thinking things.
That’s how I got so low — it was thanks to therapy and watching that toddler that I learned how to change things. Eventually, I got a job working as a medic for a TV crew, then a friend at Channel 4 recommended me for SAS: Who Dares Wins, which I joined in 2015.
On the show I push myself to do things that are scary because it teaches me to live in the moment. I started a mental health organisation, Rock 2 Recovery, to help veterans dealing with mental health issues like I had, to show them there is a way back.
Jason and Ollie Ollerton’s fitness programme Battle Ready 360: The Mission Series is available at truconnect.fit
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